~ faith, family and resistance in early modern England

Category Archives: Browne

In the last few posts, I’ve been exploring the lives of London haberdasher Nathaniel Spurrett, who died in 1614, his wife Helen Langworth, who died in 1625, and their daughter Frances, who was born in 1613 and died in a Franciscan convent in Belgium in 1635. After examining a range of documents relating to the Spurrett family, including the wills of Nathaniel and Helen, I’ve concluded that they were closely connected to some of the foremost recusant families of their day. It appears that the Spurretts lived in Southwark, possibly in Montague Close and under the protection of the Catholic Viscount Montague; Nathaniel’s executor Matthew Woodward, a convicted recusant, was certainly employed by Montague. After Nathaniel’s death, it seems that Helen and Frances were taken under the wing of the recusant Roper family of Eltham, and were supported financially by a number of leading Catholics, including Lord Windsor of Bradenham. It may well have been Thomas Roper, Helen’s executor, who entrusted the orphaned Frances Spurrett to the care of the recently-established English Franciscan convent in Brussels, where she was later professed as a nun.

Nathaniel and Helen Spurrett provide a fascinating case study of the complex and shifting religious identities to be found in early seventeenth-century England. As I’ve noted before, both were the children of Church of England clergymen, at least one of whom (Helen’s father, Dr John Langworth) was said to be a church papist; neither (as far as we know) was convicted of recusancy; and yet they counted among their associates some of the country’s leading recusant families; and their daughter became a Catholic nun.

Having exhausted (for now) the available information on the Spurretts, I’m moving on to explore the recusant connections of Helen Langworth’s sister Mary, who married into another Catholic family, and whose daughter also joined an English religious community in Belgium. I haven’t found a baptismal record for Mary Langworth, but I understand that her husband, Richard Hawkins, was born in about 1581, so I imagine that they were married some time in the first decade of the seventeenth century, during the early years of the reign of James I. As I noted in my earlier post about the Langworths, Richard was the son of Sir Thomas Hawkins of Nash Court in Boughton under Blean, near Canterbury, and his wife Ann, the daughter of Cyriac and Florence Pettit, also of Boughton. Since Mary’s father John Langworth was prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral, and owned a number of properties outside the city, one imagines that the two families might have been neighbours. Even so, the marriage between Mary and Richard suggests a surprising degree of familiarity between a conforming and high-ranking Church of England cleric and a leading recusant family.

In this post, I’ll provide some background to the Hawkins family, before focusing in later posts on specific members of the family. Richard Hawkins was (I believe) the fourth son of Sir Thomas Hawkins. His older brothers, to whom we shall return in later posts, were Sir Thomas Hawkins the younger, a translator of recusant texts; Henry Hawkins, the Jesuit priest and author; and Daniel. Another brother, John, was a physician and author; and there was a sixth brother named Cyriac. Richard’s sister Susan or Susanna, who was a year older than him, married the recusant John Finch of Grovehurst, at Milton near Sittingbourne. Another sister, Anne or Anna, married William Hildesley of Oxfordshire, also a recusant. The youngest Hawkins sister, Bennet or Benedicta, who was born in about 1587, became a Benedictine nun and, like her Franciscan nieces Mary Hawkins and Frances Spurrett, ended her days in a convent in Brussels.

Sir Thomas Hawkins the elder had been born at Boughton under Blean in 1548, during the reign of Edward VI. Boughton lay on the main road between London and Canterbury and was the first place from which travellers were able to see the towers of the latter city, a fact which earns the village a mention in ‘The Canon Yeoman’s Prologue’ in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Thomas was the son of another Thomas Hawkins who died in 1588, apparently at the age of 101, and was buried with his wife in the north chancel of Boughton church. His tomb carries the following inscription:

He served King Henry VIII, which won him same, who was a gracious prince to him, and made well to spend his aged days; that he was high of stature, his body long and strong, excelling all that lived in his age.

On 12th September 1574 Thomas Hawkins the younger married Ann Pettit, then aged twenty-two, from another Catholic family, the Pettits of Colkyns. Ann’s parents were Cyriac Pettit and his wife Florence Charnoke. In 1543 Pettit had been involved in the so-called Prebendaries’ Plot which denounced Thomas Cranmer for his excessive reforming zeal. During Queen Mary’s reign he was a Member of Parliament and was close to the Roper family, one of whose members – Christopher, brother of Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law William Roper – was a neighbour of the Pettits. He was buried on 15th October 1591 in Boughton parish church, where a brass plate was erected in his memory.

Monument in memory of Sir Thomas Hawkins senior in Boughton church

Despite the fact that Sir Thomas Hawkins was openly Catholic, with a son who was a Jesuit priest and a daughter a Benedictine nun, he and his family do not seem to have suffered unduly from the Elizabethan and Jacobean penal laws. According to one account of the life of Thomas’ son Henry: ‘There is evidence that Hawkins and his family were somewhat privileged through connections with the court and nobility and may at times have been protected from the full rigour of punitive measures that other recusants had to suffer.’

Sir Thomas Hawkins the elder died in 1617, his wife Ann having predeceased him. His last will and testament is a useful source of information about the Hawkins family and their connections, and I’ll share my transcription of it in the next post.

When Helen Spurrett died in 1625, her only daughter Frances was left an orphan, her father Nathaniel having died in 1614, when Frances was only about a year old. Although Frances was left money in the wills of her father, mother and grandfather, it’s perhaps surprising that none of these documents makes explicit provision for her future care. It’s possible that details of this were recorded separately, and I think it most likely that Thomas Roper of Eltham, Helen’s executor, became responsible for Frances’ welfare.

17th century house in Brussels (via wikimedia)

At some point in the months following her mother’s death, Frances Spurret was entrusted, perhaps at the instigation of the Roper family, to the care of a community of English Franciscan nuns living in exile in Brussels. The community was a recent foundation, having been established informally in 1619 when two English widows took the habit of the Franciscan Third Order at Brussels, in the church of the Franciscan Friars, with the intention of setting up an English convent. They were professed in 1620 and soon joined by other English women, with whom they purchased a house in the city. The convent was formally inaugurated on 9th August 1621. Catholic religious communities had been banned in England since the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, and joining such a community, even in another country, was a criminal offence: those who returned could expect to face imprisonment.

17th century French nuns

There are two sources for our knowledge of Frances Spurrett’s time as a member of the Franciscan community. Richard Trappes-Lomax’s 1922 book for the Catholic Record Society incorporates verbatim records of the clothings, professions and deaths of a number of communities of English Franciscans between the 17th and early 19th centuries. And Who were the Nuns?– the excellent website of the research project on the English convents in exile based at Queen Mary College, University of London – is a mine of fascinating information.

The Franciscan Book of Clothings notes that in September 1626, the year after Helen Spurrett’s death, ‘this cloyster had the education of thees children’. The names of eight girls follows, including that of Frances Spurrett. In the same year the convent was given licence to ‘receive into the monasterie to be instructed those two daughters which hitherto have lived among the sisters without…thees 2 were Jane Iremonger whom the Mother thought better to cloath and cloathed withe the habit of probation: and francis Spurreth who from that time remained a scholler with in vntill the habit was also given her.’

Immediately below this note, we read the following:

Francis Spurret, the daughter of Nathaniel Spurret, and Hellen Langworth: born in Southwarck tooke the habit of Probation in the 16 year of her age and was called in the order Francis Evangelist.

This provides us with the incidental information that the Spurrets lived in Southwark: perhaps, like Nathaniel’s executor, Matthew Woodward, in Montague Close, and possibly, like him, under the protection of the recusant Viscount Montague. In the Franciscan Book of Professions we find the following record:

Francis Spurret, by the name of Francis Evangelist in the 17 year of her age: made her vowes and profession of the third Rule of S. Francis, in the hands of the Rd Mother Mother Catharine Francis: the Rd fr Guardian of S. Bonaventures in Doway fr. George a Sto Gulielmo assisting and receiving the profession: the 17 day of September 1629. In testimony that this is truth she has hereto subscribed her name with her own hand.

A nun on her deathbed (via mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com)

Sadly, Francis Spurret’s life as a nun was to be a short one. The Franciscan Book of the Dead contains the following entry:

Anno Dni 1635 on ye 18 day of July between 2 and 3 of ye clock in ye morning Sister francis Euangelist, alias, francis Spurret, departed out of this life to ye Life everlasting in ye 23 year of her age, and 7 of her profession hauing 2 dayes before received her viaticum and exstreme vn’tion at the hands of our Confessour father Giles Willoughby, who haueing to our great Comfort and edification remained in that office above 4 yeares desired at his first coming that he might bury non, and obtained his wish but by ye espeshiall providence of God performed his pastorall office to this elected soule, that was particularly guided by his Counsills being willing to Correct her natural inclinacions by his spirituall aduice dyed most happily in his custody, and was buyed by his successor ye Rd fa. Gorge paurett she dyed of a burning fever, in parfect sence, sweet repose and resignation. Deo gratias.

Firstly, Helen Spurrett’s will includes some useful information about her family. When Helen died in 1625, her only daughter Frances would have been about twelve or thirteen years old, having been christened in 1613. In her will Helen writes as follows:

I give and bequeath to my daughter Frances Spurrett three hundred pounds to be paid unto her at such tyme as she shall fully accomplish the age of sixteen yeares compleat and that in the meane while she be mainteyned wth the pfitt of the saied three hundred pounds or wth so much thereof as shall seemed to my Executor fit and convenient and when she shall happen to Marry then my will is shee shall have two hundred pounds more for her better preferment and augmentacon of porcon yf so my Annuities and other Goods can conveniently beare the same my debts and charges of funeralle defrayed.

Obviously Helen Spurrett had no idea that her daughter would enter a convent and end her days as a Franciscan nun. Helen also makes provision in her will for three of her siblings: her brother Thomas Langworth; her sister Mary Hawkins, the wife of Richard Hawkins; and Ann Purkell, the wife of Joseph Purkell. We shall have more to say about them in future posts. The other relative mentioned in Helen’s will is ‘my cosen Roger Owin’, whom I’ve been unable to trace. One of the witnesses to the will, Francis Unwin, seems also to have been a relative, probably of Helen’s late husband: he had witnessed Nathaniel’s will eleven years earlier.

The will also contains a reference to a recusant family mentioned in Nathaniel Spurrett’s will of 1614:

I give to Jane Woodworth widdowe the some of twentie pounds whereof there are give already paied her for recompense of the trouble and losses wch her husband fell into by reason of his being executor to my late husband Nathaniell Spurrett

This must be a reference to the widow of Matthew Woodward (the usual spelling), who was named as executor in the will of Helen’s late husband Nathaniel. As I noted in an earlier post, Woodward was a servant of the Catholic Viscount Montague and was himself imprisoned for recusancy. The sources I quoted in that post gave the name of Matthew’s wife (another convicted recusant) as Elizabeth, but perhaps he was married twice. The nature of the ‘trouble and losses’ that Matthew suffered in his role as Nathaniel Spurrett’s executor remain unclear, though Michael Questier’s Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Englandnotes that Matthew Woodward died intestate; his widow would surely have been grateful for Helen Spurrett’s bequest of twenty pounds.

To date I’ve been unable to trace ‘Mr Ardent of Greenwich’ and his wife, who are to receive gifts from Helen Spurrett’s will, but I wonder if ‘Ardent’ is an alternative spelling for ‘Arden’. The Ardens were, of course, a prominent recusant family, though mostly in Warwickshire, rather than London.

However, there seems to be no mistaking the identity of ‘my Lord Winsor’, who is said to be responsible for one of the two annuities enjoyed by Helen Spurrett. An official document of 1624 includes the following entry in a list of local officials who are said to be ‘Popish recusants or non-communicants, that have given overt suspicion of their ill-affection in religion, or that are reported or suspected to be’:

The Rt. Hon. the Lord Windsor is certified to be a Commissioner of Peace in Buckinghamshire, and by common fame, to be a Popish recusant

Why someone of Baron Windsor’s rank should pay an annuity to the widow of a London haberdasher remains a mystery, unless it’s an indication of the Spurretts’ prominence in the recusant community. We learn that Helen Spurrett was in receipt of a second annuity, from a Mr Newell or Nevell. There was a noble family of that name, with Catholic sympathies, one of whom was the dedicatee of William Byrd’s collection, My Ladye Nevells Booke.

However, perhaps the most interesting recusant connection revealed by Helen’s will is with the family of her executor. Helen describes herself in the will as residing ‘in the Countie of Kent’, where she must have moved following the death of her husband Nathaniel. It’s possible that Helen and her daughter took up residence in the Canterbury area, where a number of siblings were living. However, the fact that her executor, his family, and at least one other person mentioned in the will resided in Eltham, closer to London, makes this a more likely location – especially as the family in question were famous for providing shelter to other recusants.

Sir Thomas More, from the portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger

Helen names her executor as Thomas Rooper of Eltham, son of Sir William Rooper. I’ve discovered that Rooper was an alternative spelling for Roper, and that this was in fact the famous Catholic family connected by marriage to Sir Thomas More. An earlier William Roper (1496 – 1578) married Margaret More, Sir Thomas’ daughter. It is his son Sir William Roper, of Eltham and St Dunstan’s, London, who is mentioned in Helen Spurrett’s will, as the father of her executor Thomas Roper. William Roper was married to Catherine Browne, from the same recusant family that supplied the Viscounts Montague. Thomas was married to Susan Winchcombe of Henwick. His elder brother Anthony lived at Well Hall, Eltham.

The first William Roper, husband of Margaret More

There are a number of references to Thomas Roper in Michael Questier’s book and it’s clear that the Ropers were one of the leading recusant families in southern England. Like the house of Viscount Montague in Southwark, referred to in the will of Nathaniel Spurrett, the Ropers’ home in Eltham seems to have attracted Catholics seeking refuge and protection. For example, it appears that William Colleton, one of the witnesses to Helen Spurrett’s will, was also a recusant (he is almost certainly the gentleman of Eltham who made his own will in 1640) and probably related in some way to the Catholic priest John Colleton who spent the last days of his life in the house of Sir William Roper, dying there in 1635.